Early Years

Child-Care Quality: A new study offers strong evidence that
raising the wages of teachers in child-care centers can improve the
quality of the care children receive.

"For every age group, classroom quality was most strongly associated
with teacher wages," according to the study, which looked at infant,
toddler, and preschool classrooms in 104, mostly nonsubsidized centers
in Atlanta, Boston, and the central area of Virginia.

"These findings indicate that centers in which teachers are
supported with higher wages also provide higher-quality environments
for the young children in their care," the study concludes.

"Within and Beyond the Classroom Door: Assessing Quality in Child
Care Centers" was conducted by researchers from five universities and
appears in the March 28 issue of the Early Childhood Research
Quarterly, which is published by the Washington-based National
Association for the Education of Young Children.

The quality of the programs was determined by using three different
rating instruments, which measure such features as curriculum, play
materials, indoor and outdoor play spaces, and caregiver-child
interactions.

The researchers found that wages were the highest predictor of
quality in the preschool classrooms.

It is unclear, however, why teacher wages appear to play such a
significant role, the authors say. They suggest the reasons may include
that higher pay contributes to the stability of a center's staff, and
that centers that pay more can be more selective when hiring
teachers.

While wages were linked as well to the quality of the infant and
toddler classrooms, the researchers found that teacher training,
parents' monthly fees, teacher-child ratios, and group size were also
important factors.

"This may be interpreted as encouraging news for those who seek to
improve quality of care for infants and toddlers: Apparently, there are
many avenues to quality for these youngest age groups," the authors
write. But that finding, they add, might also suggest that all of those
factors require attention in order to provide high-quality care for
young children.

While most studies of child-care quality focus on characteristics of
the classrooms themselves, this research suggests that factors outside
the classroom can also be "potentially powerful influences" on
child-care quality.

"Child-care research that blends developmental and economic
considerations is in its infancy," the authors write, "but promises to
be an exciting interdisciplinary direction for future research."